Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Sweat & Sip: YoYoYogi's Boot(y) Camp and Coopers Hall

What: YoYo Yogi Boot(y) Camp 
Where: 1306 NW Hoyt St, Suite 101
When: 6am & 6:30pm Wednesdays
Honeys Heart: The laid back and encouraging, but still butt kicking, atmosphere! 

"Sweat & Sip" is back and sweatier than ever. These days my friends often shame me with their ambitious fitness goals. A friend of mine that goes to Boot(y) Camp at YoYo Yogi always shares how excited she is and, in need of that kind of motivation, I asked Katie to check it out with me.


Morning classes are taught by Kristi and evening classes by David. Katie and I like to pretend that we can be morning people, but in truth the likelihood of us getting up at 5:30am to get to a 6am class is close to nil, so we hit up David's 6:30pm class.

When the weather is nice the group heads to Field's Park in the Pearl, but since it had been raining all day, our group stayed inside. After a quick warm up we got into high intensity interval training known as Tabata. It's four minutes per circuit where you push it as hard as you can for 20 seconds, rest 10 seconds, and repeat 8 times with the same exercise. Our series included double crunches, jump lunges, arm exercise things (technical term, obvs), and 180 degree jump squats. By the end our muscles were burning.

The best part of YoYo Yogi's Boot(y) Camp is the laid back and encouraging atmosphere. I was a little nervous since "boot camps" can be so serious, but instead everyone was friendly and motivating. Talking between rounds was encouraged and David was jumping around the room engaging with each group while Kristi timed the sets.

Definitely a hard workout made better by a nice group of people! After an hour it was time to refuel...

What: Coopers Hall
Where: 404 SE 6th St (& SE Oak)
When: 4-10pm Sunday-Thursday, 4-12am Friday & Saturday
Honeys Heart: Our knowledgeable server

Tired and in need of a pick me up, we headed to Coopers Hall in southeast for some wine and dinner. The winery and taproom has a great open feel with all of their wines on tap. Check it out...


Katie and I have come to know our cocktails well, very well, and with Doug's help, Katie is pretty knowledgable about beer, but we don't know much about wine beyond the fact that we drink plenty of it and we can say whether we like it or not. Based on the fun descriptions on the menu, we had originally planned to go for a Gamay Noir that we "should be drinking all summer long" and a Pinot that is "insanely drinkable," but after soliciting some advice from our waiter, we learned that we should try the Carignan ($13 glass) from Medicino County (which he claimed to drink a lot of) and a Seggiolino (?) which was similar to a tempernillo-type blend and was "rocking the boat in just the right way" according to the menu.


I think he was right in that the wines were excellent, but per glass they were more than we typically spend on a bottle. So if you're on a budget, a wine bar maybe is not the best choice, but for a little education and to expand our palettes, it's a good idea! 

Next up: food. After that workout we needed more than a glass of wine. We were tempted by both the Chicory salad ($9) with chicory, orange, sunflower seed, and a basil vinaigrette and the Kale salad ($9) with chard, golden raisins, hazelnuts, and bleu vinaigrette, but lucky for us our waiter helped steer us to the excellent decision of going with the kale.

The golden raisins and balanced vinaigrette made for a super tasty and satisfying salad and I love the firmness and crunch kale brings to a salad.  


We also ordered the Clams ($15) with bacon, stone ground mustard, and dill. I'm not a fan of dill, but that was mostly as a garnish and added a bit of freshness. The sauce was super tasty and had we allowed the waiter to, he would have brought us bread to dip in it (trying to be healthy for Katie's upcoming nuptials!). Of course, we did still scoop the bacon pieces out of the bottom of the bowl...


Coopers Hall was a bit on the pricey side, but a great atmosphere combined with a knowledgable staff, good food, and fun wine descriptions may lure us back on special occasions or for a one-glass type of night.